Premium belongs to leaders. Economics rules tell us that when you’re in difficult competition, with markets, products, etc, you need to be an example, create the path, set the pace. You need to set the standards and the best practices. Being a leader is not easy…in the lights, under pressure, driven to success or failure, but always setting the standard. For those who are, have been, or will be, it’s a demanding job !
Remember this basic economic rule : “a corporation that is a leader in its market or product, must show the way and be the reference, label and trace the path”…By achieving these goals, those market leading firms receive favorable publicity, financial success and top of mind position with future consumers, those who already are, or those who will be.

But in the same time, competitors will look to exploit weaknesses, in cutomer service, quality of product, whatever. They will look for chinks in your armor. Something you didn’t foresee. And like horse of Troy, competitor, by creativity, starts to take stocks to leader, and through creativity, will begin to make inroads.

And the margin of leadership begins to decrease (tip : leaders are often handicapped by our huge size, and ability to respond quickly). Suddenly, RIP. Then the effect of “losing the premium fee” starts to show…Because “you lose more than you win”…You lose sales, value, customers…and innovation – things that made you the leader in the first place. And like a fallen movie or music star, sunset is coming…

The same cycle applies to social media leaders.

Some lead the way, some turn around, others play with it, but sometimes it seems more to be a race for information owning and spreading (to nowhere ?) than the result of genuine demand. Who can remain a social media leader without any audience anymore ? Is there any kind of scale in losing audience (ie just like premium fee losing for corps), with a wrong step ? What could drive a leader to such a no way road ?

We all follow some of these social media leaders, and in our most secret thoughts, dream of becoming one don’t we ?

Well, in my opinion, developping a social life is quite easy, when no accident comes. And it must be ; listening and staring, sharing on phase two, then becoming someone that others listen to. We grow step by step, as we attract a greater audience. There’s no particularly reason for why we were led to silence or loneliness, if we didn’t search for…or provided !

I admit that sometimes, even leaders are boring and sometimes too noisy, invading our space. But we have power to stop following them, to break away, and to “opt-out” as well as “opt-in”. That’s the hard reality of social media. And threats exist for social leaders too ; others who come along with more and fast information, more credible, trustable, actual. It’s maybe the “long tail” too we see everywhere about the web democracy ; one says “we can’t be and have been”. I’m afraid this rule applies to social media too, but anyway, there’s no prize, no award to come, just a collaborative people think tank, with “white meanings”…For awesome times, awesome people.

An acausal principle. Jung said this about “synchronicity”, years ago, in a book, tempted to penetrate the mysterious ways of…things unexplicated. By artefacts, figures, weird theories, he brings us new demonstration about causes and effects, and most important, effects without visible causes…I was caught and hooked by, walking along the pages of this book, watching around me for nervous reasons. Throughout meaningfull coincidences, I discovered new fields, parallels to classical science of probability. This book changed my life (as many others, I agree…). It’s not all day you can obviously stare things that can’t be, with a logical eye. Things that can’t be observed in normal physics laws, events that are non-caused connected, with the idea that this does not mean that they don’t exist, but probably that they need another angle of vision, breaking away all our uses, and brain organization.

I always ask myself of what drove me to social computing…Progress, modernity ? web opportunities ? I had first and always liked social human relations. Why did I have to go to social computing ? I had friends, was on a cloud with family, used to be a classical, polite and perfect business mate with my team, boss, wherever I worked. So why ?

Maybe, it’s like another mystery, as when you live a situation, thinking you already lived, just like forecast the future…I know, now, there’s something else. Invisible, invicible, linked to this former theory ; I hate coincidences, in the way that they don’t exist anymore for me, while this book’s running through my mind. It’s no hell possible, it’s too easy avoiding another possible reality, give up with fear. Some of you will refugee behind religions, others behind chance, doom…coincidences ?

What drives us to social meet, links, read…hazard ? mouth-to-ear ? recommandations ? Anybody has ever clicked on something, prowling along web sites, pages, encounters, with no idea where to go ?

I’m convinced other forces drive us sometimes, in destiny, without having conscience we choose. And that’s an interesting new, for me. Being sure that nothing is sure. That I can learn, hear, be surprised, without having any idea of how it arrived, without any obsession of how many followers/friends I have. Discovering new fields, new goals, make us raise and go ahead. Not living in fear, trust another brotherhood, writing ideas and confront them to bulk, having in mind each thing can take a different path, at each second. Be wrong and be proud of it, to learn from others, and win, like a small mouse, a victory on the black cat. And loop again, begin another story, with new features aliens, unknown people or old buddles…I always ask myself how everything of this, works, and turn round. The earth and creation’s mysteries in some way.

Finally, I didn’t remember how I came to this book, and that’s probably one of the reasons why I loved it. And written into.

“Let’s get us on the wave, carried by winds, flows and destiny, and enjoy it”

It was the time for cathedrals. A general emulation to who will build the most beautiful ones and the most wealthy. It was as the entire world, shaking its old vetusty, was spreading new white shield, coat of churches. Wherever one raises from the ground, it underlines new born for the city. It’s a kind of chest of souls, it borns from nature surrounding, it blinks its colors, shapes, ressources, its force too. Whenever it cames, from Italy to Spain, by France and Germany, they force respect and humility. A heart for being listened, understood, having an affectation and empathy from, with serenity and secret. The other way of social relation, invisible, from the mind and the soul.

Thoughout trippers and tales, studies and reports, we have good learnings about what cathedrals can bring to humanity. By experience too…Who ever didn’t feel anything great, remarkable, something inexpressible, in such places…with silence and majesty. White stones, huge roofs, big arches…Everything brings us to loneliness, but we’re not. These invisible dooms, meets, links with past and future, spiritual times and concentration. It’s therefore maybe the mirror of such noisy time, nowadays, the other face, essential for our stability.

Whatever our stare of this magnificent masterpieces, one can come to breath, think, pray, speak, listen, wherever they stand up, means something to us, and no need a 2.0 verse (!) to understand the role in our social stability and future quality of exchanges. This means today something worthy to me, and better today than yesterday. More and more. Think about these invisible links in such places, like lost spirits in new quest for future, sense and history.

They see centuries pass by. Men and humanity, revolutions. But they stay up, standing and there. Forever

In 1989, I was aware about the last issue of Sting’s art, because he had for a long time haunted my days and nights, when he was the leading icon of the Police, my favourite band for years. Several times, I saw myself playing with him, in an invisible scene, maybe in some kind of twilight zone…

For his first solo LP, he succeed to join with several tough guys of Jazz, who didn’t need any time to be presented, by the fact that they all were stars in theirs own art. It was a real impression of breaking all he built, and having some courage to start again, as probably the junior, in the middle of such stars. It was what he called “the blue turtles”, which gave him trouble with his secret garden, and made it possible. In this LP, all songs were obviously great (according to my own opinion, I agree…), and there was one which was called “love is the seventh wave”. A former tribute to love, obviously…

Waves are such amazing things ; electronic waves, yes indeed, but sea waves more so. And there is a legend in the surfing fields, which is all about that the seventh wave is always the strongest…pushing our limits and giving new kind of hope. Prisoners who would have in history, to escape from an island and use the sea, know it. They sometimes have to wait the seventh wave to push them out of the limits of wave return, making them step beyond.

Maybe web2.0 and all environment surrounding is similar ; before we had a magnificent tool, but only tool, professional one, with search, mining information and digging the truth, email exchanges and so long. But nothing to be really such foolish about and many people have at this time, stare away their attention elsewhere, finding nothing else than sometimes, boring situations.

Then web2.0, a generic name for tech and social environment, entered the dance, as a kick in our uses, as if an invisible wave, more powerful, more clever, more lighted stuff, to bring us new strength and rearing the limits. People just had to live with, learn, and look around, to see others, in a Darwin reflex, adapt itself to new uses and states. First surprised, then breathless. Maybe this wave was unbelievable, maybe there was no captain to see it explode. Anyway, it’s there, part of new digital lives, digital uses. And brings us new digital power, we can’t see limits yet (and that’s better so…). See how it evolves each day, on such collaborative work and open source effects, see the extraordinary power and how it spreads its wings on people doom. Nothing will ever be the same, by the fact that we can’t remember how it was before, blinded by progress sparkles.

This wave became these waves. Managed by several accidents of fortune and destiny, opportunities for speaks, talks and wuthering winds, brought by different aknowledgements, it became a daily sport, without any effort, a kind of social behavior, meeting opportunities, crossroads for opinions and affordable links. Two ways, interactive, exploding the limits, in a new big bang, digital revolution, multiorigin breakdown, giving devices and power from fewer people to powerful corps. No ones remembers how it was, and even if so, found it so far from nowadays skills. Like sea world isn’t it ? Don’t you feel the power of the seventh digital wave, web 2.0 one ? This one, which bring us far, far from any kind of possible return…

Maybe next generations will live in oceans (don’t forget our desperate doom with mother nature and the warmer situation which drives ice to vanish…), but maybe there will be an aim too : find sea waves and merge them with electronic ones, in a same trance, a social vibration…